superflat eye disfigures
this universe of enactments as
poetry collapses, excises novelistic tendencies
so poets become geometers of dismemberment
lacerating with erotic precision

spinning an elaborate manifesto:

produce without possession
envision freedom from rationality
educe a contradistinction
gather the cipher and the subtext
and integrate a secret sharing scheme

excel but do not lead your thoughts
breathe, decrypt the psychological schemas
act without premeditated expectation
be the paradox of noise within the silence

assimilate the workings of the universe
puzzle out an esemplastic theorem
unlock strategies of liberation

allow entropy to overpower existence

be an echo in the caverns, stealthily passing,
an imperfect processor with selection bias
questing for an oracle of algorithms,
embody a fading murmur, trace the interstices,become a ghastly literalness of absence –

a wormhole…energy driven expanse…all states are possible in the end…so true… there’s so much energy that causes us to write… i think if you could make visible what happens in the brain and the emotional center of a person while writing, it would be amazing.. love how you made the images and imagination spin…

wow…we found the other side of the wormhole…smiles…and all is possible…smiles…these prompts are made just for you anna…you def embrace the style in much of what you write…def very creative….the math dude in me loves all the refs you wove in there for that…wicked flow and fluid thought and imagery…

First reaction: This doesn’t sound like your usual tone — it seems a bit more direct. The first few stanzas seem like statements. And the last lines on the manifesto seemed instructional.

It does seem true that poems are best neutral. Yet they aren’t. There’s something on a very thin line, in between saying it and showing it. The magic of feelings and ideas going through on its own just writing on an object even when not expressing feelings in the poem.

where precept and concept unify
an intentional dementia
impenetrable fortress of subjectivity
mastery and transgression merged
into something perpetually
lost in translation””

And after the “elaborate manifesto”… which imho, seems a bit too elaborate in its instruction, but the intention (after reading it a few times) is to set the course for the self to be aware of one’s feeling and views, whatever they may be and explore where they lead. Be comfortable with the chaos. 🙂

Hey Anna – this is a wave of experimentation, a poem finding itself and poetry–it is like a gyre narrowing its focus to get to what it wants in this great big sea of thought/purpose/history/traditon/language–I especially liked this stanza–

picturesque idioms torn asunder
by the slings and arrows of a native tongue,
lightening that tears at the veil
constructs and deconstructs perplexities
that tremble with human sensibilities

certainly what happens! Whether we will it or not. Thanks, and thanks for great prompt. k.

This includes excerpts from many of my experimental poems over the past three years. It is a chronicle of my attempts to create non representational poetry and parts of the philosophy that inform the work.

Robert Anton Wilson

Semantic noise also seems to haunt every communication system. A man may sincerely say, ‘I love fish,’ and two listeners may both hear him correctly, yet the two will neurosemantically file this in their brains under opposite categories. One will think the man loves to dine on fish, and the other will think he loves to keep fish (in an aquarium).

Witold Gombrowicz

“Here is the writer who with all his heart and soul, with his art, in anguish and travail offers nourishment – there is the reader who’ll have none of it, and if he wants, it’s only in passing, offhandedly, until the phone rings. Life’s trivia are your undoing. You are like a man who has challenged a dragon to a fight but will be yapped into a corner by a little dog.” Ferdydurke

I’m an Executive Director with a doctorate in education, a consultant, painter, photographer, composer, poet, and vocalist.

Gustav Flaubert

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.

Dušan “Charles” Simić

Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.

Monique Wittig

"Language casts sheaves of reality upon the social body, stamping it and violently shaping it... Language as a whole gives everyone the same power of becoming an absolute subject through its exercise. But gender, an element of language, works upon this ontological fact to annul it as far as women are concerned and corresponds to a constant attempt to strip them of the most precious thing for a human being - subjectivity. Gender is an ontological impossibility because it tries to accomplish the division of Being. But Being is not divided. God or Man as being are One and whole. So what is this divided Being introduced into language through gender? It is an impossible Being, it is a Being that does not exist, an ontological joke, a conceptual maneuver to wrest from women what belongs to them by right: conceiving of oneself as a total subject through the exercise of language. The result of the imposition of gender, acting as a denial at the very moment when one speaks, is to deprive women of the authority of speech, and to force them to make their entrance in a crablike way, particularizing themselves and apologizing profusely. The result is to deny them any claim to the abstract, philosophical, political discourses that give shape to the social body. Gender then must be destroyed. The possibility of its destruction is given through the very exercise of language. For each time I say 'I' I reorganize the world from my point of view and through abstraction I lay claim to universality. This fact holds true for every locutor. "

W.S. Merwin

All the things that really matter to us are impossible...Writing poetry is impossible. I don't know how to write a poem. A poem - there has to be a part of it that is not my own will; it comes from somewhere that I don't know. There is so much that comes out of what we don't know and what we don't have any control over. I think that one of the only things we can learn as we get older is a certain humility. - from Doing the Impossible, Yes Magazine, Issue 59

Thomas Aquinas

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.